Following the criminal hacking and leak of private photos that were and should have remained the personal property of the respective celebrities from whom they were stolen, Apple has launched what it calls a comprehensive investigation in hopes of getting to the bottom of the biggest celebrity mobile phone hack the media has ever covered.

In the last 48 hours, Apple's iCloud has taken a beating in the press and across social media in response to the leaked images, which reveal countless sensitive and intimate images of well known celebrities. But Apple on Tuesday put forward its most direct statement yet with regard to what exactly happened.

While pledging to help bring those behind the hack to justice, Apple is making it clear that its iCloud platform should not bear the brunt of blame for what happened.

"We wanted to provide an update to our investigation into the theft of photos of certain celebrities. When we learned of the theft, we were outraged and immediately mobilized Apple’s engineers to discover the source," the statement reads.

Our customers’ privacy and security are of utmost importance to us. After more than 40 hours of investigation, we have discovered that certain celebrity accounts were compromised by a very targeted attack on user names, passwords and security questions, a practice that has become all too common on the Internet. None of the cases we have investigated has resulted from any breach in any of Apple’s systems including iCloud® or Find my iPhone. We are continuing to work with law enforcement to help identify the criminals involved.

"To protect against this type of attack," Apple says, "we advise all users to always use a strong password and enable two-step verification." Both of these are addressed on Apple's website here.